MSC Software | CASE STUDY

Case Study: Big Tyre

Nonlinear Analysis Accelerates
Development of Non-Pneumatic,
Non-Solid Tire for Mining Industry
Overview
Designing the right tire for large wheeled vehicles used to haul
coal and other materials in underground mines presents an
enormous design challenge. Pneumatic tires present risks
because of the danger of an explosion in a confined space
while solid tires are associated with relatively large vibrations
experienced by the driver. Big Tyre, a company that specializes
in producing solid tires for mining vehicles, is developing a
unique alternative which uses arrays of leaf-springs, typically
made of composite materials, to provide performance
similar to pneumatic tires without the risk of blow-outs. The
company began designing the new tires in 2002. They first
designed and built drive tires for a racing go-kart - these
prototypes, built in 2006, proved the concept very well.
Next they designed full-size prototypes for mining vehicles
using finite element analysis but found that the software was
incapable of modeling the rubber once it was bulging under “We have been able to improve the design at
load, causing the analysis of the wheel to always terminate a much faster pace than in the past. It even
allows us to simulate driving maneuvers of the
early while carrying much less than full load. This seriously
vehicles, including obstacles on the road.”
inhibited their ability to design the wheel – consequently the
first full-size prototype for mining, while again confirming the
concept, did not meet the design criterion they had set.
“We were pleasantly surprised that Marc was able to handle such a demanding
analysis problem in such a short period of time and deliver results that closely
matched test results on the prototype.”
Bruce Louden, Big Tyre
Challenge
Underground Tire Challenges
Big Tyre is a manufacturer of solid wheels
that are primarily used in underground mining
vehicles. “Many mining companies have
switched from pneumatic tires to solid wheels
because of the dangers presented by pneumatic
tires underground,” Louden said. “Mines
underground have bolts sticking out of the
walls that can easily cause punctures. Tires
on heavy vehicles are inflated as high as 170
psi, so when they are torn or punctured a
considerable amount of force is released. Due
to space constraints underground, workers
are often in close proximity to the tires so the
potential for injury when a tire is torn or ruptures
is a major concern.” Because of these concerns,
many mining companies have switched to solid
rubber-tired wheels or solid tires comprising
a pneumatic tire whose interior is filled with
foam. These tires eliminate the risk of punctures
but their dampening properties are inferior
to pneumatic tires so operators experience
considerably more vibration. In some mines,
operators are restricted to spending no more
than 90 minutes a day on machines with solid
wheels due to the effects of vibrations. Another
problem is that foam-filled solid tires don’t
provide as even a distribution of pressure on the
ground as pneumatic tires. The highest pressure
is usually seen in the center of the tire which can
lead to the formation of ruts on the floor of the
mine where the mine is working on soft strata.
Big Tyre has developed a non-pneumatic, non-
solid segmented tire which it hopes will overcome
Fig. 1: Inventor Bruce Louden with non-
pneumatic non-solid wheel prototype
these problems and potentially revolutionize
the underground mining industry. The tire uses Key Highlights:
composite leaf springs that are more than four
times as flexible as steel. The leaf springs are
configured in opposing arrays so the wheels Product: Marc
are completely balanced. The inner end of each
Industry: Heavy Equipment
leaf spring is connected to a steel hub, while the
outer end is connected to steel or fiber segments
Benefits:
that are bonded to a rubber tread. This design
• Accurate simulation that closely
eliminates the need for the tires to be inflated
so it eliminates the risk of punctures, reduces matches test results
heat entrapment and is also expected to provide • Flexibility of defining various
greater load, speed, haulage distance and longer design parameters to optimize
life relative to pneumatic tires. Compared to final design
solid wheels, the new design provides reduced
vibration, increased ride comfort, lower contact
pressure, more even pressure distribution,
and improved lateral stability on slopes. While done before it can be frustrating,” Louden said.
prototype wheels are open so that the springs “Using the traditional build and test method,
without suitable FEA software, we would
can be viewed, the production models will be
have had to build prototype after prototype,
sealed on both sides for safety reasons and
which would have been very expensive and
to prevent the tire from being contaminated
time-consuming. It was clear that we needed
by particles and debris from the mine.
to simulate the performance of the tire but this
was a very challenging simulation problem.”
Solution In order to simulate the performance of the new
Introducing Simulation Into tire, Big Tyre engineers needed to model the 3D
The Design Process contact between the springs and the segments
The design concept provides the flexibility and between the rubber and the road, the glued
and challenge of defining various design contacts between the segments and the rubber
parameters including the number of springs and the self-contact of the springs. They needed
in an array, thickness of springs, curvature of to address the hyper-elastic material behavior of
springs, length of springs, material properties
of springs, geometry and material properties of
the segments that the springs attach to on the
outer diameter of the wheel, as well as many
others. The design criterion is to provide a
very efficient vertical loading for the size of the
wheel while providing similar if not equivalent
suspension to a pneumatic tire, with excellent
torque capacity and lateral stability. “When you
are designing something that has never been
Fig. 3: Marc model of segmented tire prototype
Fig. 2: Picture of Underground Mining Machine (Eimco Fig. 4: Hinges connect leaf springs to segments
913) with Big Tyre’s first full-size prototype wheel
 the rubber, the large deformation and (deliberate)
buckling of the springs, and the elastic plastic
material properties with failure for the composite
leaf springs. They also needed to model the
pin-joints between the segments while allowing
for large deformations and driving the wheel. Big
Tyre engineers tried to evaluate the performance
of the new tire using the software package they
had previously successfully used to analyze
structures. “This software package is excellent
for analyzing structures or assemblies with small
deflections but could not cope with the highly
nonlinear behavior found in the new tire,” said
John Shaw, Managing Director of Solidtech
Engineering Services, a consulting company
that provides engineering services to Big Tyre.
“We were only able to solve about 40% of what
we wanted and we were suspicious of these
results because we were not sure that the
nonlinear properties of the wheel were properly
taken into account. Most important, we were
unable to determine the failure point of the wheel
which is the most critical design specification.”
“We talked to Compumod because we
discovered an article on the web that described
how MSC FEA software was capable of
re-meshing during an analysis to handle
excessive strain in materials such as rubber,”
Louden said. “When we described the problem
they told us that Marc was the right simulation
Fig. 5: Simulation results for vertical loading of
symmetry model-b
Fig. 6: Force vs. displacement curve
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tool to address it.” Big Tyre commissioned
Compumod to simulate the initial prototype. Big
Tyre provided 3D geometry of the wheel and
Compumod imported the geometry into Patran
to create the finite element model. Hexagonal
elements were used for the springs and rubber
and tetrahedral elements were used for the
steel segments. Symmetry in one plane was
used to reduce the size of the model. The
hinges between the different segments and
between the springs and segments were
modeled with rigid RBE2 elements that allowed
free rotation around their own axes parallel
to the wheel axis. 3D contact was defined
between the ground and rubber. The rubber
was glued to the segments through a special
glued contact condition. Normal contact was
defined between the springs and the segments
and between the springs themselves. Big Tyre
provided data for the material properties of
the rubber and springs by conducting force-
deflection experiments in their laboratory.
Results/Benefits
Nonlinear Analysis with Marc
Compumod first conducted a nonlinear static
analysis on one spring to correlate the model
material properties with experimental data. The
material properties were tuned to replicate the
measured reaction force in the experiment.
Fig. 5: Simulation results for vertical loading of
symmetry model-c
Fig. 7: Picture of prototype wheel advancing over
an obstacle
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Then a nonlinear analysis was performed on the
entire wheel to assess its strength. The wheel
was given an enforced displacement of 150 mm
which was solved in 100 nonlinear increments.
The reaction force was then measured on the
ground and graphed against displacement.
The first negative slope indicated failure of the
wheel at 252 kiloNewtons or 25.7 metric tons,
which is well over the target of 16 metric tons.
After the first collapse of the wheel, the contact
between the springs and between the springs
and segments added stiffness to the wheel and
the reaction force increased again for increasing
displacements. “We were pleasantly surprised
that Marc was able to handle such a demanding
analysis problem in such a short period of
time and deliver results that closely matched
test results on the prototype,” Louden said.
“After seeing the benefits of the software,
we decided to purchase Patran and Marc,”
Louden said. “Compumod organized training
for us in their Sydney office and handed over
the models they created in the consulting
project. We very quickly began designing the
second full-size version of our design, and
have been able to improve the design at a
much faster pace than in the past. It even
allows us to simulate driving maneuvers of the
vehicles, including obstacles on the road.
Fig. 5: Simulation results for vertical loading of
symmetry model-a
Fig. 8: Simulation results for moving wheel
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